Sleep Paralysis and You - Final Version

This is the final version of Sleep Paralysis and You after Prathik has composited in all our parts.

It's been a long few months and I am incredibly grateful to have worked with such an amazing team and astounded that we were able to submit a finished product, given the circumstances. The next step will be to make any corrections and add shading for festival submission, and if all goes well we'll continue to make animations like this as a professional studio too.

Finishing off my cleanups

Sleep Paralysis and You

In the last weeks leading up to submission, I've been focussing on getting my scenes finished, not perfect and have been keeping a list of things to correct/tweak before we submit to festivals.

The zoom out section of the fire reveal scene was surprisingly cumbersome - I worked out from After Effects that the canvas would have to be 9 times the normal 1080p size for it to zoom without loss of quality, so I worked on a canvas this size in TVPaint and made four frames with increasing line thickness, which took a while because of the lag of working on such a big canvas. When I took it into After Effects to test out the zoom, it broke both AE and Media Encoder when trying to render it. I eventually got around the problem by cropping the canvas to the size of the character and parenting this to the background in AE. I probably overcomplicated this scene for 4 frames but it looks good and provides the leniency to alter the timing of the zoom in AE.

Scene 20 - Fire Reveal (zoom test)

I sent over the source alpha movs to Prathik to composite with this fire effects and tweak the timings as needed.

Scene 22  - Caught Red Footed

The Caught Red Footed scene is finally done and I'm satisfied with how it turned out - I think the hair is following through nicely and I managed to get in some squash and stretch of the legs, plus I like the timing of the stomp movement. There might be a frame or two where the hands are a bit big but the overall movement works well.

24 Profile Walk

The overall movement works well for the Profile Walk scene too, though it could potentially use a little squash and stretch on the legs. Also I wasn't sure about the hair line that goes down the middle of her face and whether it should be in contact with her shoulder - I ran it past Prathik who said it should be touching the shoulder but because the hair is moving a lot in this scene I would need to spend extra time on it to get it right, so we decided to leave it as it is for now and I'll go back in and correct this before festival submission. Prathik did the crack animation for this scene.

Scene 25 - Cracking Front

I managed to add the hair boil to Kilo for the Cracking Front scene (which is also used in the Caught Red Footed scene) and he looks more alive now. I feel like the cracks could be better though so I'm adding this to the list of things to correct before festival submission.

Scene 26 - Cracking Profile

I feel like the hands look a lot better in this scene than what they originally were in the roughs. I also added more tweens to the arm and hair movement to make it smoother and it works well. The hand movement is intended to be constantly slow for the creepiness, but I might go in after submission to add some subtle easing to the last two frames.

Scene 31 - Kiss Cut

I added lineart to the foreground stretcher and grass, and ended up changing the colour palette for the green of the mask so that it's darker and matches the background better. Following the final crit feedback, the white flash has been made much shorter so that the transition is a lot more sudden.

Scene 32 - Zoom of realisation

I added props (the oxygen tank and the ECG machine) to this scene and colour picked Halli's background to make three belts go over Kilo here. The original dimensions of this scene is double of 1080p to allow for the zoom out from his face. I like how this scene turned out and I think the slow eye closing movement tweens well. The only thing I could improve might be some subtle head movement up and down with the breaths, but the shoulder and hair movement already translates that well enough. We also made the decision a while back to take artistic licensing and make Kilo alone in this scene when in reality, he would be covered in paramedics.

Prathik finished off his scenes before me and offered to take over my Scene 5 Getting In Bed scene, which I gratefully accepted. He added in an 'I told you so' referring to the beginning of the year when he warned me I was taking on too many scenes (though in my defence a lot of them were simple before they evolved into complex scenes). I felt a little bad that I had to ask for help but I'm glad I was able to recognise it beforehand and ask, and retrospectively I might've been able to finish that scene myself but I think it would've been at the cost of quality. At the end of the day, 12 out of 13 finished scenes is not bad.

What worked well:

• Adding hair movement to Kilo in the static scenes for signs of life
• Adding more tweens to Penny's hair movement and arm movement in the Cracking Profile scene for smoother movement
• Overall movement in the completed scenes work well
• Changing the colour palette of the rebreather mask
• Shortening the white flash transition
• Adding the medical props to the final scene
• Prathik slightly altered the colour palette of the cracks so it wasn't pure white anymore, so I updated my scenes with cracks accordingly and I agree it looks better

What to fix before festival submission:

• Kilo's hair is a little off model in scenes 18 to 20 (Fire Reveal)
• The middle hair line in Scene 24 (Profile Walk)
• The cracks in Scene 25 (Cracking Front) - needs more easing and the linework redone
• Changing the lineart style for the stretcher and grass in Scene 31 to match the background lineart style
• Subtle easing in hand movement in Scene 26 (Cracking Profile)
• The eye shine needs to encroach on the eye whites in the end scenes with Kilo outside (Scenes 31 and 32)
• All the scenes will be shaded for festival submission too

I passed on alpha mov versions of my completed scenes over to Prathik for him to composite with the backgrounds and effects animation.

Heart of Stone

I had one scene to clean up for the Medusa project which Prathik roughed out. I colour picked one of Halli's backgrounds and found a similar lineart brush for the foreground fox statue (Halli didn't have a background for this scene at the time) but was open to changing the statue out to whatever Halli might want in its place.

Scene 17 - Toes out for Medusa

My role for this project is now complete for final submission, but I'll be helping out with cleanups after submission (as it won't be finished in time due to pandemic related issues) so we can collectively submit a finished animation for festivals.

SPnU Cleanups

Sleep Paralysis and You

I've been primarily focusing on cleaning up my scenes for Sleep Paralysis and You. I have admittedly fallen behind on my deadlines for this project and possibly spread myself too thin over my other projects, but I'm pleased with the steady progress I've made so far.

This scene is almost finished and just needs the last last zoom out section to be animated. Otherwise the hand movement is looking better compared to what it was originally:

I'm still in the process of cleaning up my more complex demon movement scenes, which are coming along alright so far:

I thought this scene was mostly finished with the exception of the cracks but Prathik said Kilo's head looked unnatural when it was composited into the main file and needs some subtle hair boil which I will add if I have time:

I'm actually really happy with how this scene turned out. I ended up adding tweens to Penny's hair movement so that it moves smoother and it looks really good to me. The tears are also a vast improvement to what they were before. In terms of what can be done better, if I have time, I'll increase the sizes of the eye shines so they overlap with the eye whites (which will show better in compositing):

For this last scene, I colour picked Halli's background from the scene following this to make up the stretcher and grass background which I think worked well. 

I think the movement of everything works well, my feedback was to decrease the amount of pan and zoom so that it's a bit more subtle and less jarring, and to also add a flash of white to the transition, which I did in After Effects:

The pan and zoom definitely looks a lot better now.

I have barely made any progress on the 5_GettingInBed scene, having been focusing on my more complex scenes till now. I've let Prathik know that I'm struggling with the deadlines and might need to delegate that specific scene to someone else. He said he doesn't have time at the moment to do it himself but will have a better idea later, so until then I'll try to finish all of my scenes as best as I can.

Scene 5 - Getting in Bed
The rough has been a little more refined but Kilo will need to be sized up before tie downs and cleanup

Other Projects

Jenny reviewed my roughs and asked me if I could redo them with a 2 pixel brush as she hadn't noticed the thickness before (I used the default 5 pixel brush) and I had showed her the first rough before she made a reference sheet specifying 2 pixel thickness on the roughs. I told her I didn't have time to redo them but we found a compromise by me applying an effect in TVPaint that erodes the linework and brings it down to 2 pixels although there is some loss of quality. I also converted everything to psd files to make it easier for the cleanup artist to work off them.

For Heart of Stone, I still have one cleanup to do which I've made a start on and will attempt to finish after I've gotten more of my SPnU cleanups done.

HoS and Dance Animation Project Update - finishing off roughs

I've taken a short hiatus from Sleep Paralysis and You to catch up on my parts for the projects I'm helping out with.

Heart of Stone

When I roughed out Medusa walking across the pan scene, it became clear early on that she had too much background to walk across and some of her movements needed to be altered for the timing - she was originally going to look around at "now now don't run, don't hide" but it had to be pushed earlier to the instrumental part for her to reach the other side of the background in time. It still worked well thankfully, and Halli is aware that the background will need to be shorter now.

The feedback for the Medusa Dip scene was that the snakes needed to move slower at the end when spotting the man. The snake lengths were also a bit too short, so I redid the snakes and feel they look much better now. I also did a background test and though the man fit in fine with some tweaking, Medusa's size was disproportionately small compared to the front statue even after panning her to the correct position. Halli is aware of this and will tweak the size of the statue and position of the statue's hand before Hannah cleans up the scene.

I also tweaked the final zoom segment so the snakes tweened more and added a couple of frames to loop while Medusa is zooming out.

What worked well:

• Tweening the snakes in both scenes and slowing down their movements to appear more snake-like
• The altered timing of the movements for the pan scene despite not being in the intended position still work well with the soundtrack
• The panning test generally worked despite the shortened background
• Adding a little overshoot in the leg when it goes up in the Medusa Dip scene

What could be improved:

• Consistency with the snake thickness could be better in the Medusa Dip scene
• The snakes could potentially have more movement in the panning scene

My roughs for this project are now done, all that's left is for me to clean up one of Prathik's roughs and my role for this project will be finished.

Dance Animation

One of the things Jenny wanted was a visual representation of stars at the beginning of the animation, so I thought it would look good if they trailed light after being plucked from the sky and returned to the sky after the dancer fell:

I also tweaked the effect I did previously so there was more build up and a bit more detail with particles fading away and I feel it looks a lot better now. I put a note over one of the frames that will need to be extended otherwise the timing is a little too fast for the effect to work.

There was a scene where Jenny asked to make it look like the dancer disappears dramatically, giving Thanos from Avengers Infinity Wars as an example. At some point I realised I wasn't sure which frame to start from when animating on twos so I just animated on ones to let the cleanup animator decide which frame to use. As a result I think it actually looks too fast but when I doubled up the frames, the timing worked better so this is something I'll bring up with Jenny to see if the music would still match with the end frames doubled up. The segment on ones look like this:

I had a surprising amount of difficulty with the wing segment, I ended up with three different versions of wings and showed them to Jenny, who agreed with me that the the third option looked the best while the other two were "too pointy".

I continued with the third option and added some feathers that disappear. The original timing of the video had to be tweaked for it to work so I marked out which frames had to be held for different times as well as a couple of frames that would manually need tweening.

What worked well:

• Altering timing and tweening of frames to fit the effects better in the disappearing and wings effects
• Using reference to get the wing shape and anatomy right

What could be improved:

• The frames where the dancer disappears completely could last longer but this might affect the syncing of the music more than it needs to be
• A segment of the frames from the dramatic disappearance scene will be timed better if the frames are doubled up

The next step will be to check over the roughs with Jenny to see if anything needs correcting, otherwise my role in this project is complete.

SPnU, HoS and Dance Project Update - roughs and cleanups

I have been admittedly distracted by pandemic related issues, however I've been able to get in some work for both Sleep Paralysis and You and Heart of Stone.

Sleep Paralysis and You

I haven't quite finished tweaking some of my roughs but I did manage to do some cleanups:

I think the cleanups are generally looking good, but I still need to alter the hand movement in the Cheek Caress scene and the Fire Reveal scene might need more exaggerated facial features and movement. I do like the squash and stretch/follow through of the face when he startles awake though.

I've also redone the top of the head on the 8_UWU cleanup because it was previously wiggling due to lack of line consistency. I think it looks much better now:

Heart of Stone

We had a group meeting at one point to get feedback on our current progress, and I hadn't noticed the arms were too short in my Torch scene. I have since corrected this and added some tweens so it can be passed over to Prathik to rough out the fire animation:

Scene 3 - Torch

I have also roughed out a couple of other scenes, which I'll ask for feedback on our roughs deadline. Halli made a great mouth shapes reference to be used on our lip syncing scenes which I've applied to one of my scenes. I've also made a reference video for Medusa's movement in my 8_Pan scene but I've yet to rough it out.

Scene 10 - Medusa Dip

Scene 30 - Zoom of Realisation

What worked well:

• The lip syncing and the poses for the Medusa Dip scene
• The turn on the Zoom scene

What could be improved:

• The snakes might be too thick in the Medusa Dip scene
• Unsure about the last Medusa facial expression in the dip scene
• Some of the movement might be too fast in the Zoom scene
• Some of parts of both scenes will need more tweens once I'm sure the team are happy with it.

Dance Animation Project

Jenny finished editing the dance videos to be rotoscoped and let me know what she wanted effects on. I wasn't clear on one of the scenes where the dancer is supposed to 'disappear by boiling away' on a jump and then reappear on landing so I made a rough test of the scene with my interpretation of disappearing and reappearing and Jenny liked it a lot.

I personally think it's too simplified at the moment so I'll be redoing this properly at some point.

SPnU, HoS and Dance Project Update - roughs, cleanups and tests

Sleep Paralysis and You

Prathik compiled everyone's roughs together and made some notes on what needed to be changed, including some facial expressions that weren't continuous between cuts. The scenes that were worked on and altered were:

Last still frame tweaked for consistency with character design

Drawings were stretched out to make it more consistent with one of Prathik's scenes

Arm length was tweaked as it changed height in a few frames

The initial hop was cut due to it being 'too happy' and a few frames were held a bit longer

Cracks were animated

Tweaked the thumb in in the last frame as it was off

Re-animated Kilo's eyebrows and redid the tears, added a missing eyebrow frame for Penny

What worked well:

• I was a little disappointed about the hop needing to be cut but it'll make it easier to cleanup in the end, the rest of the tweaks work well in general
• The scenes are more consistent and have better continuity with Prathik and Damo's scenes now

What could be improved:

• The hand arc in Scene 18 is a bit off and will need tweaking
• The hands in general need to be animated in the zoomed out scenes of Demon Penny
• The last still shot with Kilo on the gurney still needs to be tweaked as it is too static

Testing the demon eyes

Prathik asked me to test out some eye styles for the demon as he originally had wanted something similar to the eye style of Don't Starve but after testing out a few different styles, we all collectively agreed that the simple glowy eyes were the most appealing and the easiest to keep consistent.

This style boiled with too much inconsistency

This style looked alright but there was not that much gained compared the effort of producing the effect

The simple glowy eyes is what we all decided looked the best without unnecessary effort

In the end, this is what the cleanup looked like for this scene, and I'm pleased with how it looks.

Heart of Stone

I finished off the Torch rough I started and made a start on a couple of other roughs.

Scene 5 - Torch

Scene 8 - Pan

What worked well:

• Adding a tween for when the man picks up the torch
• Raising his shoulders and lowering his head when Medusa walks by
• Also moving the sword closer as the man cowers

What could be improved:

• Consistency with mouth shapes in the Torch scene
• Adding the Medusa character animation
• Adding some hair follow-through when he moves in the panning scene

Dance Animation Project

Jenny hasn't given my any scenes to add effects to as of yet but I took one of her rotoscoped animation tests and added some wing morphs. She was happy with how the test turned out.

SPnU - Starting the remainder roughs

I got Damo's help to take some reference videos of me for the scenes I hadn't started yet and finally made a start on them.

Scene 21 - Fire Stomp

Scene 22 - Caught Red Footed

Scene 24 - Profile Walk

Scene 25 - Cracking Front

What worked well:

• The new profile walk scene is vastly improved from the original basic walk cycle
• The character acting in scenes 21, 22 and 24 are much better with the use of reference
• Hair movement needed tweaking while I was animating this but I feel it moves well in all the scenes
• Demon Penny originally throws up her hands too high in Scene 22 in relation to the fire so her arms were tweaked for that segment

What could be improved:

• The scene needs to be zoomed in more at the feet level in the Fire Stomp scene (it is currently zoomed just below the knees)
• Prathik pointed out some mild height discrepancies in scenes 22 and 24, which I'll fix next
• I'll need to make sure the arms/shoulders are consistent in the Cracking Front scene when I'm tying it down
• Hands need to be roughed out properly

Sleep Paralysis and You and Heart of Stone Update

This week I've been mainly redoing Kilo's head in my SPnU scenes to fit the character design more accurately.

What worked well:

• Kilo looks more consistent with the character design now

What could be improved:

• The zoom out scene is a bit too static, I'll need to add some breathing movements at some point and I still need to remove the extra ambulance characters on the side
• Demon Penny's hands are off when she rests it on the face so that will need tweaking

 I've also made a start on Halli's Heart of Stone roughs.

What worked well:

• Overall movement seems to work
• The pause to look around before grabbing the torch

What could be improved:

• Add rest of facial features
• Add a tween when picking up torch
• Finish animating the sword movement